No new clarity on the bottom line

The government has taken a largely mainstream approach to its national security strategy by emphasising the central role of nations rather than newer non-state threats and reinforcing the importance of Asia after the wars in the Middle East.

While this is unsurprising, it is still useful to emphasise that modern national security planning requires better co-operation between arms of government and non-government players, especially business.

There’s some lip service to maintaining defence spending after last year’s big budget cuts and improving the diplomatic footprint in Asia, but little engagement on how to assess or balance this spending.

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Indeed, the exhortation to public servants to pull down a silo if they find one suggests that the main source of any new funding for embassies in Asia or defence equipment will come from bureaucratic reshuffling.

This government has attempted to provide some greater order to its national security challenges than the Rudd government’s long list of priorities, which is useful.

Gillard boiled these down to traditional state-based rivalry; the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, especially in Iran and North Korea, and instability in fragile states.

There is a subtle shift away from the relatively benign, more economically determinist view in the Asian Century white paper towards more discussion about regional tensions in the security document.

But in the end we still don’t come away with a clear view from the government about whether the outlook is more risky than a decade ago as, for example, China and Japan face off, or less risky as more Asian countries become economically integrated and less inclined to conflict.